Mac Taylor is retiring this month after serving 10 years as head of the nonpartisan and widely respected Legislative Analyst’s Office, which analyzes the state budget and other big issues. He deserves the kudos coming his way, having been a positive, thoughtful influence on many issues.

In 2010, less than 15 months after voters gave their blessing to $9.95 billion in bond seed money for the statewide bullet-train project, Taylor’s office identified a problem that state officials have never been able to solve: private investment in the project that is crucial for its completion was unlikely without promises of state subsidies if revenue didn’t live up to forecasts — and such subsidies were illegal.

Last year, Taylor warned that despite bold plans to increase housing stock and ease the housing crisis, state leaders would never make much progress unless they cultivated public support to overcome the NIMBYs who dominate the local planning process. His view has been borne out again and again.

But on one key topic, Taylor wasn’t nearly as forceful as he could have been: the pension tsunami that Gov. Jerry Brown predicted this week will doom many government agencies to “fiscal oblivion” unless they are given ways to contain ballooning costs.

While Taylor and the LAO deserve credit for documenting the funding shortfalls with the California State Teachers’ Retirement System that led to passage of a bailout plan in 2014, he has not done nearly enough to challenge the spin from government unions that has long stymied smart pension reforms. Their campaigns always focus on the relatively small cost of pensions in the state budget — not the many cities and special districts that are on track to spend 20 percent or more of budgets on retirement benefits.

Taylor’s pension passivity was on full display last month when he issued a strikingly upbeat 25-page report on state finances that focused on the expected $14.8 billion surplus in the 2019-20 budget. It failed to mention hugely underfunded pension liabilities — the highest on a per-household basis of any large state. That’s like celebrating a family’s income without noting its credit-card debts.

The next legislative analyst must not have a blind spot about such a grave problem. It won’t fix itself.